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craft means community

Friends of OCAC is dedicated to connecting, supporting, and promoting the widespread Oregon College of Art and Craft community.

Since its 1907 origin as the Arts & Crafts Society of Portland, the Oregon College of Art and Craft (OCAC) has understood the power of connecting community and craft. Growing from a community group of artisans across the region holding classes at assorted homes and galleries, to an accredited institution with a gorgeous campus nestled in the woods of Portland’s west hills, OCAC has thrived through its celebration of craft as a social undertaking.

The Portland Spirit

Since its time as a regional leader in the Arts & Crafts movement of the 1900s, the city of Portland has become famous at home and abroad for its creative spirit. From its many public arts projects and artful city planning, to its celebration of local luminaries including author Ursula K. Le Guin and Calligrapher Laureate Lloyd Reynolds, to its pride in its makers and the phrase “Portland Made,” OCAC could have no better home.

Throughout its century-long history, OCAC has profoundly impacted the Portland region and continues to play a major role in shaping, refining, supporting, and promoting countless artists and craftspeople. It has maintained close cooperative relationships with its fellow historic Portland institutions Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA) and the Portland Art Museum to further the growth of craft in the region, and supported diverse local organizations including Timberline Lodge and Gather: Make : Shelter. True to the Portland spirit, OCAC has been a national trailblazer in the arts, with programs including the only pre-college art program for Native American teens in the United States and the first-of-its-kind MFA in Craft.

Paying it forward

As students, teachers, artists, makers, and community members, the Friends of OCAC have benefited in innumerable ways from their connections with the Oregon College of Art and Craft community. Friends of OCAC aims to share the importance of this historic and celebrated institution with a new generation of Portlanders through events and projects designed to connect, support, and grow the widespread OCAC community.

Our Latest Updates

We received a letter from the OCAC Board of Trustees this afternoon in response to our letter with over 1000 signatures (and counting!). It’s not the town hall meeting we had hoped for, but the Board has agreed to send two of their representatives to meet with a small number of Friends members and faculty/staff. We will present the letter again at this meeting, so sign it if you haven’t yet added your name! https://goo.gl/forms/IkxhiqXzG0vlAxOj2

Even though we can’t invite the whole community, we’d like to include everyone in some way, so we’re asking now for the community to contribute questions they’d like to ask the Board. The Board has asked us to meet right away, so we only have one day to gather questions. If you’d like to submit your questions, please add them to our facebook discussion here.

THANK YOU to each and every one of you who helped make this meeting happen.

Since it was first posted to the community on Wednesday night at 6pm, our letter to the OCAC Board of Trustees requesting a community town hall meeting has gathered an additional 836 signatures! A sincere thank you to everyone who signed, shared, and supported us.

Sign our letter to the OCAC Board of Trustees! The Friends of OCAC are requesting a town hall meeting with the OCAC community to clarify the current situation and constructively seek solutions together. We invite all members of the OCAC community to sign this letter showing their support. We plan to submit this letter to the Board on Monday, February 18. Sign here: https://goo.gl/forms/IkxhiqXzG0vlAxOj2

Support OCAC

We encourage you to support the legacy of craft with a contribution to Oregon College of Art and Craft. To make a donation online, visit www.ocac.edu/support-ocac. Contact Chief Advancement Officer Michael Oreste with any questions: 971.255.4212 / moreste@ocac.edu.